1. Field
The following description relates to technology for predicting a patient's potential change of Coronary Artery Calcification (CAC) level.
2. Description of Related Art
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a leading cause of death in developed countries. About one-half of CAD patients experience myocardial infarction (MI) or acute myocardial infarction (AMI), and some of them die of MI or AMI.
A Coronary Artery Calcium Score (CACS) is closely related to heart diseases.
The CACS is obtained by means of computed tomography (CT) or another medical imaging process, and indicates progression of atherosclerosis and an accumulated amount of plaques in an artery. If a CACS increases, the chances that MI or heart diseases might occur are high.
For this reason, it is important for a patient, especially a high-risk patient, to have CACS measured to thereby be informed of a heart disease risk.
Reportedly, advanced age, current smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, obesity, and kidney disease are associated with an increase in CACS.
However, existing studies simply present statistical differences between a patient group and a healthy group on the basis of a risk factor, but fail to suggest a quantified risk degree of each risk factor, a collective effect of integrated risk factors, or an effective prediction model.
Furthermore, although various medical tests reflect newly-found risk factors in their results, the test results are not used to predict whether CACS would increase. That is, numerous studies simply help to predict occurrence of angina pectoris, MI, or cerebral infarction, which are heart diseases caused by an increased CACS.